Disclaimer – Kishimoto owns Naruto and the characters therein.
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Memories Of Others
Chapter 37
A Genin's Retraining
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"Naruto, what's wrong?"
Naruto half-turned to look at the one who had asked the question.
"Hey, Hinata. It's… well, long story short, during my day with the Toads, they taught me how to speak to my tenant. Bad news, my chakra got a boost from it and as a result, my control's almost back to when we first met."
Hinata activated her byakugan and winced slightly. "There's more red chakra in your system than before…"
"Yeah." Naruto sighed as he summoned several dozen clones who promptly started trying to water-walk and tree-walk. "I'm going to be spending the next week or two just doing chakra control exercises. This is going to be a pain, especially since I don't want to risk cloning you until I get my control back up."
"Risk?" Hinata asked, then her expression showed sudden understanding. "Your tenant's chakra. You don't know how it'll react with your control problems."
A loud crack interrupted her and she stared at the toppling tree, then her gaze switched to the embarrassed-looking clone sitting at the base of the newly-formed stump.
"…you need help." She concluded. "I'll ask dad if I can teach you a couple of the clan's exercises. The more exercises you know, the faster you can get your control back."
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"Jiraiya." Hiruzen said as his student lounged on the windowsill.
"Sensei." Jiraiya replied, rubbing his shoulder and earning a quizzical eyebrow. "Training with Pa and Ma toad to improve my Senjutsu. On the plus side, I only need one of them in order to go Sage in battle and my nose doesn't change as much. Heck, I can use Sage Mode independently but only for about three minutes at the moment. Negative side, I still ache all over… damned stick…"
"Shame the Monkeys don't have Sages, not since Son Wu vanished." Hiruzen mused. "How soon before you're back to full ability?"
"Well before the finals, if that's what you're asking." Jiraiya replied. "I won't really be able to teach Naruto for a while, kid needs to get his chakra control back after learning how to talk to the fox…"
"WHAT?!"
"Ah… yeah. I forgot to mention." Jiraiya said with an embarrassed shrug. "Pa Toad took him to… somewhere and when they came back, he could talk to his tenant and was getting chakra from it."
"And you didn't mention this before… because?" Hiruzen grumped, slowly lowering himself back down into his seat.
Jiraiya shrugged again. "Well, it's not like he's using the pure chakra of the fox, it's still mixing into his own system via the Seal, hence his need to regain his chakra control."
Hiruzen gave his student a long glare, then sighed.
"It's always something new with him, isn't it?"
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Shikamaru paused, ignoring the frantic yowls of the demonic feline caught in his shadow. The sight that had caught his attention was a veritable sea of orange flowing around and up various trees…
…and either getting blasted off with explosions of chakra or slipping down as if the tree was suddenly made of ice.
"Got it!" Choji declared and Shikamaru released his shadow-hold, his attention still on the teeming Narutos. Walking over, he tapped the closest one on the shoulder.
"Are you the original, or is he here?"
"No." The clone replied. "Boss went off to see Hiashi about something to do with regaining our chakra control. Dammit, one boost and we're back at square one…"
Shikamaru looked round at the training clones.
"I did some research into how Kage Bunshin work." He commented. "Since Naruto uses so many of you clones in our exercises, I decided that I needed to learn their strengths and weaknesses. While reading the scroll under my father's gaze, I came across an interesting note about how the memory return phenomenon works and I came up with a possible way of magnifying its effects…"
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Naruto knelt in the Hyuuga Main Branch Dojo as Hiashi stood in front of him. Beside him, Hinata sat calmly, her presence reassuring even though she was remaining silent.
"So." Hiashi stated. "As Hinata has explained, you have recently undergone a change in your chakra, thus requiring you to re-learn your chakra control."
"Correct, Hiashi-Dono." Naruto confirmed.
"And my daughter suggested that learning some of the Hyuuga clan's secret techniques?"
"Hinata-hime said that should you allow me to learn the chakra-control exercises that the Hyuuga clan uses, my chakra control will return to its previous level a great deal sooner than I would be able to achieve otherwise." Naruto confirmed. "However, any such decision must be taken by you. Should you choose to allow me to learn, I will willingly take an oath to never teach another the secret techniques in question."
Hiashi nodded slowly.
"Actually, as soon as Hinata explained the problem to me, I decided that I would aid you myself in the times when I am not pursuing my other project."
Naruto stared at Hiashi in shock while Hinata twitched slightly. Hiashi's lips twitched slightly in amusement, then he turned and walked to the front of the Dojo. Picking up what looked like a bundle of metal sticks, tubes and plates, he returned to the middle of the dojo and began setting it up, aided by Hinata. Soon, a spindly-looking table was standing in the middle of the dojo.
"What… is it?" Naruto asked, joining Hinata and looking at the device in confusion.
"As you know, the Jyuuken, our fighting style, relies on highly focused chakra strikes. In order to achieve this, our clan had to learn how to expel chakra and focus it as precisely as possible. To that end, we developed a series of… tools… to aid us. This is the first, designed to aid in teaching how to expel precise amounts of chakra. Daughter?"
Hinata placed her hands on two marked points and activated her byakugan, then the innermost rod rose from the tube that was holding it, halting half-way up. A few seconds later, the six rods surrounding it rose to half of the height of the first rod, then the outermost ring rose to half the height of the previous ring, then all of the rods sank back down.
"Your chakra capacity has indeed increased, daughter." Hiashi noted approvingly as Hinata stepped back, then he placed his hands on the marked points.
Naruto watched as the center rod rose almost to its full height with the surrounding rods rising and falling in a near-hypnotic fashion before they retracted once more.
"Power raises the rods, control over the amount of power lets you move them. As you saw, with enough practice and discipline, the rods can be controlled individually. Have a try. Just channel a small amount of chakra to start with."
Naruto stepped up and slowly placed his hands on the indentations. Taking a calming breath, he reached inside for the smallest amount of chakra he could and pushed it into the device, only for the flow of chakra to suddenly spike.
Fwoosh! Twoiyoioiyoioioioing…
"Ah… oops?"
Hinata and Hiashi both stared at the ceiling, where the central rod had embedded itself for half of its length in the central beam.
"Ahahahahahaaa… sorry?"
"You really do have a problem with your chakra control, don't you?" Hiashi finally managed.
"Perhaps we should try this in the old gazebo?" Hinata suggested.
"Perhaps we should." Hiashi agreed. "Perhaps we should."
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"Well, that was… interesting." Hinata giggled as she and Naruto walked down the narrow path.
"At least your father was understanding." Naruto sighed. "Although if I keep it up, it's going to cost me a great deal to keep repairing the gazebos… still cheaper than paying to rebuild the Dojo, though."
Hinata's giggles turned into musical laughter and Naruto smiled at her while he wrapped an arm around her shoulders in order to prevent her stumbling.
"Once I get my control back enough to do the Hiraishin again, I'll bring Tazuna over and pay him to build a new gazebo for your clan." Naruto said as Hinata managed to bring herself under control again.
"I'm sure you'll do better tomorrow." Hinata smiled.
"I hope so." Naruto sighed.
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"What the…?"
Hiashi stopped as he heard the cut-off exclamation, then turned round and hurried to where the speaker was stood, staring upwards in shock.
"Tou-san."
"Hiashi." The elder replied almost absently. "What… happened? I do not recall those holes being there before…"
Hiashi looked up at the multiple holes that marked the support beams or actually penetrated through the wooden roofing.
"The result of a chakra-control exercise." He said in explanation. "However, there are fewer holes than I expected. His control must have improved significantly."
"What? What sort of exercise causes… this?"
Hiashi motioned to the rod-and-tube device stood in the corner of the gazebo and the elder stared at it disbelievingly.
"…who?"
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"Impressive." Hiashi allowed as he watched the rods slowly rise and fall. "Less than a week to attain this level of control…"
"Using dozens of clones to water- and tree-walk every moment of the day helped." Naruto admitted. "Shikamaru's concept of staggered dispelling made all the difference."
Hiashi raised a quizzical eyebrow and Hinata quickly explained.
"If a clone is dispelled, Naruto gets its memories, but if a clone dispels itself, its memories are received by all of the other clones as well. Shikamaru worked it out a while back during one of Naruto's missions to help train Team Ten and when he found out that Naruto was having trouble with his chakra control, he exchanged his knowledge for a couple of favors to be held until he claims them."
"I had my clones practicing the rasengan again." Naruto added. "At first, they kept destabilizing, but I can do it again now. As soon as I manage a couple of test Hiraishin jumps, I'll be ready to do that as well."
"Your chakra has smoothed out." Hinata noted, deactivating her byakugan. "There aren't any red blobs in it any more."
"True, although the actual shade of color has changed slightly." Hiashi agreed, deactivating his own byakugan as he spoke.
"Maybe we can start using clones again." Hinata suggested hopefully. "By training with them, I was finally getting better in Jyuuken…"
"That reminds me." Hiashi said. "I took the liberty of speaking to Maito Gai after Neji mentioned that Gai had corrected one of his stances recently. He has seen you practice and he says that the standard Jyuuken is not optimal for you, given how you move. I have tasked one of my aides with searching the archive for the variant that your mother used. The version known as… Juho."
Hiashi stopped speaking as Hinata threw herself at him, hugging him tightly before suddenly releasing him and stepping back, blushing furiously.
"My apologies, Hiashi-sama." Naruto said quickly, earning a confused stare from the Hyuuga clan head. "The clone-practice technique has, amongst its other effects, a tendency to cause Hinata and myself to occasionally respond as the other would... That was my standard happy-hug. It's a side-effect that we hadn't really considered a problem… until now."
"It was… unexpected." Hiashi agreed. "But I feel no need to take issue with it."
Hinata sagged in relief.
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"Nice." Jiraiya said as he examined the swirling sphere of chakra in Naruto's hand. "I'd say you'd managed to get your chakra control back to where it should be."
"I've got my hiraishin working again." Naruto agreed. "Just in time, too. I've got a load of messenger missions waiting for me."
"Happens when you're faster than even the best messenger birds." Jiraiya chuckled. "Fortunately, the three who taught you have been picking up some of the slack."
"You know," Naruto mused, "If I give Hinata a couple of clones to work with, she could help out as well…"
"And what happens if one of the clones is popped?" Jiraiya countered. "Until she has enough chakra to create two clones on her own and be able to make a jump, she'd be technically at risk every time she did one of the relay missions."
"I guess you're right." Naruto sighed. "It's just…"
"I know, kid." Jiraiya agreed softly. "You want everyone else to know just how awesome she really is and how lucky you are that she wants you."
Naruto gave the older man a questioning look and the Toad Sage gave a lop-sided smile in return.
"You're not the first person to fall hopelessly in love, you know. Let me tell you of my old team-mate Tsunade. I had a crush on her for years, but when she became engaged, I swore that I wouldn't do a thing that could stop her being happy…"